They arrive at her bedside but stand in such a way that they block her view of the door. Hardly a mistake on their part. Certainly not an innocuous maneuver. They know what they’re doing.
Ify remains alert, even as she settles deeper into the bed and adopts a pose of comfort. She fights to keep the wry grin from her face.
First the police who came for Grace, now this. They always seem to come in twos. Grace! Ify’s heart rate spikes at the thought of her missing assistant. A man’s voice, however, snatches her back to the present.
“Madame Diallo,” the first officer says in a deep, melodic voice. “We are pleased to see your recovery proceeding.”
Ify arches an eyebrow at him, as though to say, Get on with it.
“Your body was recovered at a police station in Kaduna State, the site of the terrorist attack. Your business at the police station in Zaria Local Government Area?”
“Excuse me?”
“We would like to know what you were doing at the Zaria Local Government Area police station at the time of the explosion.”
Ify snorts and looks away, pretending to be annoyed. Explosion. Terrorist attack. A few more puzzle pieces fit into place. “I was speaking with a desk attendant.”
“We have attempted to recover the logs containing your conversation, but the material was damaged during the initial explosion. The contents of the desk attendant’s braincase have proven to be . . . irretrievable.”
“He’s dead, then.” The weight of what Ify has survived begins to seep into her, begins to make her feel heavier in her bed. Questions swarm. Was she a target? What did this have to do with the little girl? The little girl she was looking for, the one who had called her Ify, who had been so sure that Ify was who she had been looking for. Even though Ify had never seen her before in her entire life. “And you could not recover the information from my logs?”
The first officer speaks again. “You are not sufficiently cyberized for such an operation. And your Augments were damaged in the blast.”
The second rushes in, more polite. “We would have needed your permission to access the logs, madame. Were we able to recover them in the first place.”
After a beat, Ify says, “Certainly.”
“Now,” continues the first, “your business at the police station in Zaria Local Government Area?”
She searches for an answer until one lands squarely in her lap. “Part of my investigation.”
When she doesn’t continue, they stare, both of them, with unrelenting expressionlessness.
“I am on a fact-finding mission launched by Alabast Central Space Colony. Much of our refugee population is afflicted with an illness, and I am in the process of researching its causes and, hopefully, its potential cure. I was in the course of this investigation when the police station was attacked.” She realizes something. Her minders. Her eyes shoot open, and she looks to the men standing over her bed.
They do not open their mouths, but Ify can tell from the expression on their faces that her minders are dead. They must have been standing right by the entrance when the bomb went off. They would have been caught in it immediately. Torn to shreds. No part of their form recoverable. She wishes she hadn’t been so dismissive of them, so intent on reminding them at every opportunity that she was their superior.
“I was conducting field research in Kaduna State and thought I might find some of the information I was looking for at the police station. Perhaps there was someone there who could offer some insight into . . . into the problem I was facing.”
“Did you speak to anyone other than the desk attendant?” the first asks.
Ify shakes her head. “No. Only him.”
A moment of silence passes between them before the second one says, “When you are released, please come and contact us regarding your stay in Nigeria. We want to make sure it is as smooth and pleasing as possible.” His words do not match his tone. He sounds like a tree trying to give a hug. Then they turn to leave.
Ify is about to ask how she is to contact them, then thinks better of it. They have probably been following her since her arrival in Abuja. Every set of eyes in this country is capable of telling the government where she is at any given moment. If they need to find her, they will.
It’s only now that she begins to let misgivings fill her. It was easy, when she was a Sentinel in another life and part of Nigeria’s security apparatus, to let herself be part of the country’s extensive surveillance network, to let herself be watched. Everyone was always being watched. If you were connected, your every thought or conversation or purchase was seen. The surveillance orbs that hung overhead tracked every citizen’s movements. At the time, Ify thought nothing of it. It had simply been a part of the world. It was understood that this meant peace. But as Ify sits in her hospital bed, thinking over this encounter with the Nigerian security service, she can’t help but think that all of this didn’t mean peace; it meant order—something else entirely.
With the men gone, she turns her gaze to the ceiling. Her arms begin to tremble. Her bottom lip quivers. Only now that she has let her guard down does the severity of it all come crashing into her. The concussive wave from the explosion, the fear that had enveloped her, the pain that had wrapped itself around her entire body just before her world had gone black. All of it comes rushing back into her in a tsunami of sensation. She closes her eyes, but that just makes her see it all more clearly. The wood paneling of the desk in front of her, the scuff marks of boots on the tiled floor, the spiderweb in the arch above a hallway, the face of the desk attendant in that moment when he was just starting to come out of his boredom. Then bedlam.
Suddenly, she’s a little girl again. A refugee child in a new, faraway place, a glistening white Space Colony where she knows no one and the only thing she wants is to see her sister, Onyii, again. Tears stream down the sides of her face. She grips the bedsheet in her fists. This feeling she’s kept at bay for so long, smothered and bottled up and stored in a dark corner of her mind, out of sight, out of reach, it’s all back, and she lets herself swim in it because she knows that she can only build a wall so high. Eventually, the floodwaters will beat her and break the dam. She finds small comfort in the fact that she was able to hold out until the men left before shock from the attack melted away.
The sobs slow and become softer. She sniffles. A mechanical arm from above descends, holding a bouquet of wipes, and she cleans her face, then tosses the tissues into a wastebucket that rises from the floor next to her.
The door swings open, and a blur of white rushes to Ify’s bedside, burying her face in Ify’s bedsheets. “Ify, I found you!” says the muffled voice. Grace’s voice. “Thank God.” When Grace breaks away, Ify sees tears and snot over Grace’s face, and the mechanical arm descends from above Ify’s head to dangle wipes between them, insistent. To which both Ify and Grace laugh.